


Reporting In!

by Suzume



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Gen, Ishbal | Ishval
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23794000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/pseuds/Suzume
Summary: Olivier releases Miles so he can rebuild Ishval.
Relationships: Miles & Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist), Olivier Mira Armstrong/Miles
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15
Collections: Unsent Letters 2020





	Reporting In!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kay_obsessive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_obsessive/gifts).



> I decided to go with the Miles isn't(/wasn't) married route in this fic because I felt it suited what I wanted to write better.

He wasn’t “Major Miles” anymore. Even when he needed to fall back on his military clout, he was “Lieutenant Colonel Miles” now. It didn’t roll off the tongue so mellifluously, but Major General Armstrong had taken her step up promotion and damned if he wasn’t going to do so with her, for whatever the new title did for him out here in the Ishvalan ruins.

At least he’d been able to requisition a train to take Elijah and himself to this distant point. With Elijah at his side, he wasn’t able to feel entirely calm- first of all, it was hard to think of him as “Elijah” and not “Scar”- and second, for all that Miles was himself a very large man, Elijah was even more imposing. He had a strange sense of calm that radiated from him since waking up in the Armstrong’s manor that morning though. And Elijah was as stoic as they’d ever known him to be.

At the same time that Miles was pleased to have Elijah at his side, he honestly would have wished the man on someone else…

Their luggage (well, Miles’ luggage) was already enroute, so there was no need to pick up more than a few office tokens here, crowding the back of the car a little. There were still Ishvalans living in some scattered desert ruins and they all needed to be at least offered a ride back into official Ishvalan territory. Most of them didn’t have much baggage though.

Elijah didn’t appear to have any luggage. He was probably depending on living off the land and the occasional benevolent donation. Yeah, how did it feel traveling purely on the newest general’s largesse?

There was no way the general was the least bit as attracted to Elijah as she was Miles. …Then again—! He also favored stoic expressions, no matter how irritating or dark the thoughts to cross his mind (back at Fort Briggs there were plenty of times Kimblee had purposely danced around the edge of bringing out his worst side). She’d only known Elijah for a handful of days- she’d known Miles for years.

...Maybe she was relishing this chance to have him removed from beneath her in the direct chain of command. Olivier wasn’t so crass as to openly “date” him, but she could be clearing the way toward something of that sort. It wasn’t anything like lust that moved either of them, but certainly, a kind of mutual admiration…

Someday when people had forgotten their many years together at Briggs, they could probably be “reintroduced” to each other and have an abundance of new stories to share. Elijah would likelier than not make a whole set of tales unto himself. And Dr. Marcoh, if he deigned to come along, would also stir up some struggles- there were people who would remember him and the less than courageous things he had done the last time he had lived out here. But Miles was set to shield him from any problems he might encounter- assuming anyone recognized him with his smashed up face- it was that same old voice he expected to possibly be noted by middle-aged and older Ishvalans.

He forced himself to take his attention off Elijah and Dr. Marcoh and instead stare blankly out the window, again. At least he wasn’t reiterating that same line of thought about who Lieutenant General Armstrong had known best in the past… He was just inanely watching the sand roll by. It was going to be quite a way further until they came upon another train station. They were likely to meet Mistress Shan and the rest of her group around there- Ishval just wasn’t ready for full-time habitation yet.

They were going to be Ishval’s first new citizens.

…And they were going to have build up that first train station in Ishval to entirely get there. The train tracks carried on into the current ‘end of the line’ to the west, but if anyone were ever going to travel out to Ishval after them, they probably weren’t going to take so well to a sudden dumping off on a hill of sand. They’d need a sun-shade at least. And a ticket booth- were there some preset standards for roughly how far a person could travel on a single ticket? He was going to have to look that up. (Maybe Dr. Marcoh would know? Or could at least come up with an estimate for him to refer to- not that he imagined Ishval would immediately become a big-name country to visit.)

Another hour and a half and Mistress Shan was carefully climbing up into the train-car, followed by her younger and spunkier companions, backing her up so she was less likely to slip and fall out onto the rougher ground.

Miles got up to greet her. It was hard sitting that long anyway.

“Oh,” Shan said, “It’s you who’ll be running things in Ishval? For a moment I was worried it might be him.” She nodded towards Scar (Elijah, he reminded himself, it’s going to be Elijah now).

“I like to think that I’m a least a little more responsible and even-tempered than him,” Miles offered. He had locked two Amestrians away in a cell for a while back at Fort Briggs, but he hadn’t been expecting to even threaten to kill them. They were just two teenagers who made it up the mountain and, that in and of itself, was suspicious. They had come of their own accord to the North- no one had sent them, from either Central or North City and had both turned out to be alchemists- not exactly a group that the Maj- Lieutenant General Armstrong was fond of.

“Hmm,” Mistress Shan said approvingly and lowered her head.

*****

“Lieutenant General Armstrong-

“We’ve quickly established a fortress out here in the desert. I don’t have the number and skill level of troops that you do, but we aren’t facing down any enemies of the strength of the Drachmans you’re set against. Mainly we’re protecting the small towns just starting to take root in the area. A decent amount of Ishvalans were born during the post-destruction of Ishval years. They only know what their parents managed to teach them, whether about languages or names or food or traditional clothing (like that sash Scar* had woven for him before leaving).

*He figured she wasn’t going to necessarily know about the name change.

“So, there’s Scar- settling in to provide some necessary education regarding the traditional Ishval tongue and script, which I suppose many parents of these smaller children, who survived the war, haven’t forgotten. As a former priest, I suppose he knows more about Ishval and its culture than many of us do.

“And Dr. Marcoh came along also to provide medical care as necessary. Aside from the doctor, everyone is returning to their ancestral home. …Even me!

“…Not that I ever lived here previously. Scar will have to put up with having me as a student the same as he does the little children and I’ll probably prove a much bigger pain than any of them. I won’t have the same elasticity of memory and probably won’t pick up Ishvalan all too smoothly. You know, I tried to teach myself once before, with a beat-up old guidebook? It was not my finest hour.”

Yet, it brought a smile to his face. He signed off on the end of the letter, a little more casually than usual. “As usual, Ma’am, I’ll keep tabs on the situation for you.

Expect my next letter soon-

E. Miles”

*****

While the community remained on around this smaller size, honestly, Miles couldn’t even come up with much to say about it. If locals had dissents, they called on him to play judge and solve them. Of course, as he had never lived in Ishval for as much as a moment before riding his first train out here, he had to lean hard onto the testimony of Elijah (okay, he was never going to be anyone but “Scar” in Miles’ mind). But fine, even if Scar was just ‘Scar,’ he knew something like a thousand things…Like where the Coi Family had lived before the Amestrians came vis-a-vis the Hatch Family.

The Lieutenant General didn’t live out in Ishval. She wouldn’t care about things like that. Maybe if something exciting happened out here like… Miles couldn’t even decide on that. A famine or something? Natural disaster? Something that could summon some detachment of her troops out here to help cope with it?

“Miles, are you trying to stay beneath my control?”

“Oh,” Miles thought. He had riled her up.

“And what’s with this ‘Lieutenant General Armstrong’ stuff? Don’t you want to break away from under the shelter of my wings? This is the perfect opportunity for you to grow on your own! Next time you write in to me, giving your report, try to make it as average as possible. Yes, that shouldn’t be easy while writing to me, but give it your utmost.

“Your colleague,

Olivier Mira Armstrong”

Miles squirmed at her response, although she was hundreds of miles away, “Err, well…” and flipped over a new sheet on his clipboard. “Olivier-“ he began simply. “I’m sorry to have offended you in such a manner. Shall I consider your response to my previous missive as a suggestion to detail more of the local happenings than before? I can certainly do so.

“A cat showed up this week, that- as far as I can tell- never previously belonged to any of the families we’re re-establishing out here. It’s a female, as far as I can tell, so I guess you’ve officially got some competition. I can’t leave any doors or windows open out here (ah, maybe you don’t know, but we’ve got some hideous scorpions, snakes, and spiders all out here and I am in no hurry to give them an easy way in), but, anyway, even with all that, Coco managed to find a way into my bedroom. …And with the way the temperatures keep climbing, soon she’s going to have gotten ahead of you in levels of intimacy, Olivier, since she’ll have seen me without my shirt on.

“But if you decide- for any reason- to come visit before the end of the summer, I can make sure you’ll be the one to see me shirtless first. …And short maybe a few other items of clothing besides?

“Come whenever you have the free time!” In the Armstrong family, there was probably no one with Olivier’s amount of stubborn panache. If she wanted to keep her days filled being busy, he assumed it wouldn’t be difficult for her to do so.

“Your colleague,

Emil Miles”

“Come here, Coco,” he held out his hand and scooped her up as soon as she’d come within grabbing distance. She rubbed against his chin and purred. “By Ishvala,” he murmured to her, “Olivier, please come to see me soon!”


End file.
